Welcome to ScaleBarIT created by Dan Scotson.
ScaleBarIT enables users to add scale bars to images quickly and efficiently. The basic steps involve choosing your image, specifying its pixel size, then choosing a region of interest and finally adding your scale bar of choice.
Dan has built this capability during his PhD in a Materials Science field and hopes the distribution of this app will provide a tailored and simple solution to adding scale bars to images.
- Download the installer from the repository. While the code has been written in MATLAB, the app is a standalone installation which does not require MATLAB software to use.
- Download the Matlab 2025b Runtime installer from here: https://uk.mathworks.com/products/compiler/matlab-runtime.html to ensure the app works (this should be included during installation but please download separately if not!).
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The default_settings.txt is a text file to customise the app default settings. For example, prefer Arial font over Calibri, size 20 over 16 or like your scale bars with a particular colour - all of this can be customised in this file.
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Ensure the default_settings.txt file remains in the same folder as the ScaleBarIT app. If this is not found, upon opening app, the app will state that master default settings have been applied (text box to bottom left populated). If default_settings.txt is successfully found then the text box will read that custom default settings have been applied.
If you publish any of the images created using ScaleBarIT, please honour the licensing and cite this repository. You can get an APA or LaTeX formatted bibliographical reference using the 'Cite this repository' feature on the right-hand information menu.
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Please feel free to add issues where necessary or contact Dan directly via email at daniel.scotson@manchester.ac.uk.
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Suggestions of improvements and additional features are extremely welcome.
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If you have a .tif image where the pixel size is not automatically detected, please raise this issue and Dan can look into adding this functionality.
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If you benefit from this app, please cite its use - it's great to see where this app is being used.
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Consider supporting Dan at Buy Me A Coffee.
Dan Scotson is the sole maintainer of this project.
If you're interested in developing this app further, please get in touch with Dan to discuss sharing of the codebase, collaboration and licensing options.
This software reuses and modifies code from:
- https://github.com/wlepage/parseTescanmetadata (parseTescanmetadata) to parse TESCAN Mira 3 Header files to extract metadata. parseTescanmetadata is licensed under an Apache 2.0 License.